Ultimate is a passion of mine. It is a sport that brings together a very high level of athletic competition and a great community of players off the field. Without one of the two it wouldn’t be the same, ultimate would not be ultimate and I would not have fallen in love with this sport.

My excitement comes from the ways in which I can advance the community and competition which effectively compose the sport of ultimate. I reside in Columbia Missouri, where I got my ultimate start and have since continued to play. It is this community that I want to begin with, where a good portion of my motivation comes from.

We need to rekindle the community bring our game back to life! How? Those are my plans that aren’t ready yet but that is my goal. The return of this community would be a huge boon for ultimate in the surrounding area. I see an unprecedented (to my knowledge) opportunity at this time. We know ultimate is lurking in the shadows around our town. Every year we see teams emerge from the woodwork to compete in the Show Me State games (Including a juniors team with never before seen players!). Our Mizzou Men’s team is on the verge of breaking back into the truly competitive arena building off the hard work of Alumns of our program. And the community is quietly but discernibly snoring, not dead, but waiting to be awakened.

If you don’t know:
Our Mizzou women’s team is struggling to gain footing. I see a new group of freshmen women who bring more amazing people into the community; A group I see as poised to form that core necessary to build a good program and bring the women’s team back to life. You need to know this young players, you can make your tradition as great as you want to, and I expect to see a lot come from you.

The Men’s team consists of some of the most amazing players I have experienced, both athletically and spirited. We are a team of athletes and win with that mentality. Vets, whether we know it or not, we are actively building and improving our program with every email we send. Rookies, whether you know it or not you are the most important aspect of our program and you bring the future of our program closer with tournament you attend and every practice you come to.

The community is the quietest I have ever seen it. When I first came out I walked onto Epple with snow on the ground and a group of crazy people bundled up running around and throwing a disc. Those players still exist but in the shadows. 573? I want a club team.

So why is this? Why are all these groups so poised to blossom yet don’t? Community, lets fix that.

All three of these groups tie into each other, feed off each other. The main relation I am certain of is how our college teams can feed off the community. The community can offer our teams experience and leadership we otherwise have no access to, and that is something i see a need for, some experience to take our athletic game to the next level.

How? I’m thinking. Start thinking.

My thoughts don’t stop there. The college Ozark Section. We have a love hate relationship with these teams. They are our rivals on the field, but still we love the players who score on us. The Ozark Section came together to watch Harding face off North Texas at regionals. It was a sight, the cheer, that certainly exemplifies the level of community this sport can display. I love this. I know our freshmen that weekend saw that game and cheered along with us and thought about how awesome this sport is. More strength for our teams. I know Harding played their hearts out with all eyes on them. More strength for our section. I know that cheer let me see just how great this sport was yet again. I am thinking about how we can increase communication, banter and the friendships we make, and involvement in our section, not just our communities.

To sum up.
All of this isn’t something I expect to do myself. All I can do is build frameworks that allow the members of the community to make their impact.
I want to do so in two areas: the community and the competition.
I see a need for better communication flow, allowing people to easily get involved in the community (college, open and pickup) and extend the realm of community beyond the city we live in.
I see a need to rekindle the game in Columbia Ultimate and effectively build the competitive level of our community and our college teams.

But all of this is premature as I said. It is all hopes and dreams, I know this, but they aren’t empty, details are coming. They are the first step. I am excited, switching between typing this and emails and forum posts. The ball is rolling, just a little bit.

See this as a call: if you have input offer it; Offer your advice and services, ideas and excitement. Leave me comments, email me. Roll the ball.

http://ultimate.missouri.edu/

About 2 years ago I took my first set of senior photos, a friend of mine who had asked me to. That was a great experience, she is beautiful and cooperative and it made it pretty hard to fail. We ended up driving around looking for good locations and towards the evening, a bit before golden hour, we drove past a house with a old white fence and barn. Both of us decided that it was a perfect place to get some shots but neither of us knew who lived there. So I walked up to the door, gave a knock, and we were greeted by an old guy who with some feigned reluctance said it was alright.
We walked around and set up some photos, he soon joined us and chatted the entire time. Well after we finished I promised that I would give him prints of the photos I had taken.

Now its been two years and I finally set off to find this place and deliver on my promise. I arrive, knock, and am greeted with a stare as he just points at me. “You’re dead meat” In my fashion I smile all goofy and then show him the photo and get invited inside. I end up staying to chat for a couple hours and am told that he has been asking around and making threats if he didn’t get a photo. This makes me like the guy, I love personality and it seems to becoming harder and harder to find. So I stayed and heard his stories, got to know him, and received some well intended threats; I got to thinking.

Hearing his life, his stories, I realized that I wanted to photograph that. Him, and with him his stories; I wanted to preserve that for some reason. And that is what photography is about, preserving something; Whether it is as simple as beauty or complex as the past of a person you preserve and share it. This goes along too with last weekend; A friend and I went to Cooper’s landing where I met another spirited older couple who shared their stories and talked of preserving. I don’t know what purpose it serves, if anything it will make my photography deeper, but I am drawn to the idea.

Along with that I began to think more of how the world removes us from our lives and creates this unsatisfying pseudo life. We create relationships that only matter in the context of making money, and spend most of our lives competing, in academics, sports, work, relationships. I don’t have time for the details of that here but simply, I am glad that my photography offers a connection back into my real life of community, real people, and memories.

I have been pondering a lot lately, realizing things like this. My mind is really interesting, I think anyway; It provides itself with many things to contemplate.

I don’t know much about the physiology of the brain but I am thinking that this is why:
The brain has many areas serving different functions, areas for your senses, spatial orientation, memory, etc. Each of these gets a different amount of use depending on what kind of person you are. I guess it would be comparable to a muscle, if you use it it grows, but it also atrophies if it isn’t exercised.

A great example that relates to what I am talking about is shown in a study i read about. In this study monks preformed a type of meditation, leaving their thoughts behind and just observing something, a flower, light, anything. As they continued this activity throughout their lives the area of the brain corresponding with digesting sensory information was much larger than those who did not.

By the way, if you have never tried meditation it is a great way to exercise the brain and relax. Keep in mind though, if you are older and trying to start, the portion of your brain required may have atrophied and it may take some time.

From personal experience this is true. I can live in my thoughts, visualize, work things through. This is definitely a result of many years of schooling, learning, making connections. There isn’t much sensory input you can get from sitting in class. The down side to this is that everything else blows by me. If it isn’t a theory or idea, say a sight or smell, I can be entirely oblivious to it.

Lately I have been trying to revive that part of my brain, sitting and just looking at things, noticing detail. It is much harder than it sounds, and if you don’t believe me then try it. But it causes me to wonder, is our education system taking away one of the most basic joys in life. The ability to experience our world. Other areas are affected as well: emotions, morals, memory, anything that makes you yourself.

This idea may be a basis of culture itself when you think about it. Entire communities and nations often follow the same systems, mainly education. How much does this mold the mind?

The possibilities of this technology are only limited, as Craig mentioned, primarily by our imagination. The major goal of his work is to assemble a working language of genetic code which can be easily written and optimized creating an organism which has desirable traits. The promise of this can be seen in building organisms which solve the major challenges facing humanity today. An example can be seen in carbon dioxide, where we produce the compound as a waste other organisms metabolize it as food. Think, plants though others act more efficiently. With Venter’s work we could soon see a method of easily building a organism which can take that carbon dioxide, digests it, and emits octane or other useful substances.

The way Criag is approaching this problem is by building that language of genomes. The hope is that eventually a computer aided design program will allow design with just a point and a click. Truly exciting.

Watch it here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/18

Nature has always been an inspiration to me, and talk of sustainable practices and design really interest me. The focus of that talk is something I really believe in and plan on pursuing through my career.

The idea outlined is basically that many if not all of the design problems found in industry can and already have been solved by nature. A simple example is the calcium carbonate buildup in pipes, found commonly in your home, and more extreme buildup can be found in chemical manufacturing processes. Generally to dissolve that buildup toxic chemicals are flushed through the pipes; This process is expensive and not eco-friendly. Janine Benyus uses the example of seashells which are the same compound, calcium carbonate, and also form in the same way the buildup occurs. The question left is why do the shells not become infinite, instead the buildup is controlled and quite beautifully at that. The answer she reveals, is a naturally occurring protein which stops the buildup. Using this natural example engineers were able to apply that protein to the pipes and eliminate the toxic chemicals used to clean them.

Janine, in her talk, outlines 12 examples of ways in which we can mimic nature and improve our industrial way of life. The examples are striking and to me very exciting. The talk is definitely worth watching.

Biomimicry on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimicry

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/140 – Insights on poverty. The speaker is great, very informed, and his message is wonderfully clear. One of the most inspiring talks to me, and the end is just a bonus.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147 – The animation of a cell. This talk brings to light some good points about education. The main point is to illustrate the beauty of the sciences, which is sometimes stripped in our education system. The animation is simply wonderful.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/146 – Will Wright on Spore.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/144 – Jonathan Harris on the soul of our internet.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/162 – Creating life in art.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/165 – Self teaching robots.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129